Does Your Company Suffer From ‘Sneakernet’?

December 16, 2008 at 3:54 pm · Filed under Sponsored Post

A Customer Story

‘Sneakernet’ is a term that I was first introduced to during a conversation with one of our customers  – Ed Metz, vice president and director of technical services at Robert Berning Productions, a creative communications and marketing solutions agency. As he explained, back in 2003 the company with a total of 13 employees at the time was suffering from ’sneakernet’.

So what is it? In Ed’s words it was the very manual process of walking down the hall to pick up a form, fill it out, go downstairs, deliver the order to the production staff, and then walk back upstairs, bringing one copy to the department supervisor and finally one copy to bookkeeping? You get the point.

This process had been in place for several years and was causing problems: often there was incomplete information on the form; a rush order could end up at the bottom of the stack or even lost; as orders were revised, other copies of the form would then be outdated. And forget about finding an old order with valuable information from a couple years back. Also, there was a tendency to issue verbal orders, simply because the paperwork was so cumbersome.

Ed knew that he needed to bring order to this antiquated process and had researched many software options for automating the work order system, including traditional database management and hosted workgroup application software. Ease of use was important, since Metz is a filmmaker and photographer by trade — not an IT professional.

One of my favorite quotes from him: “QuickBase made it easy for me to do what I wanted to with the software without having a lot of technical expertise. Compared to Microsoft Access or Filemaker, the ability to set up multiple related tables is a snap; QuickBase does much of the work for me. If I do have a question about a formula or report design, the active online Community Forum is a great resource.”

Since 2003,  Robert Berning Productions has doubled its revenue, grown to 20 employees, saved 50 staff hours per month in staff meetings, reclaimed four staff hours per month by eliminating manual work order distribution, eliminated incidences of misplaced or incomplete work orders, spent less time processing work orders and had more resources focused on client work with the help of QuickBase.

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Out of this Galaxy - Delivering Premium Customer Service Has Never Been So Easy

November 14, 2008 at 2:51 pm · Filed under QuickBase, Reviews, Sponsored Post

Luke Winter and Tristan Kampman bought Granola Galaxy 3 years ago when the company served less than 100 customers direct, mostly in its Northern California home market.  They liked the product, the brand and the potential opportunity for growth.

And grow it did.  Galaxy has added over 1,000 stores since Luke and Tristan showed up.  For the first two years, they used Excel to manage their customer information.  It didn’t scale and Luke nearly lost his mind trying to keep track of it all.  Out of frustration, Luke commented, “It doesn’t matter how good you are in Excel, it’s just not meant to be used as a database.” Yet so many people are using and abusing spreadsheets in this capacity. Luke and Tristan set out on a search for an appropriate database/CRM tool. Their requirements for the solution were that it must be customizable and flexible.

‘We considered Filemaker and Access; but knew it would require a lot of work to get started and we didn’t have that time and energy to put towards it. And Salesforce wasn’t quite customizable enough for our needs,’ said Luke.

So they decided on QuickBase and have been using it since January 2008 for their customer service management needs – specifically tracking the status of customers, where customers are located, what product the customers carry and how much they have in inventory at any given time, as well as other associated activities like in-store demo schedules and staffing. Recently Galaxy has moved their Purchase Order management to the QuickBase platform. Luke said, ‘QuickBase helps us provide a level of customer service and follow-up comparable to that of much larger companies.’

Even though Galaxy Granola is a small operation today, they are serving large customers across the US like Whole Foods, Wegman’s, and Albertson’s. They’ve got big plans for growth and that includes increased usage of QuickBase over time. As their business needs and processes evolve, QuickBase applications can evolve with them.

Luke commented, ‘QuickBase is a customizable online database that can be used for a variety of business functions. We really value the flexibility the product has to offer. QuickBase has a huge advantage there. We can adapt and make changes on the fly.’

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Small business customer uses QuickBase to streamline work

August 15, 2008 at 12:59 pm · Filed under Collaboration, QuickBase, Sponsored Post, Web Apps

Last January, I sat down with the CTO of Zopa Inc., Rajesh Jayaraman to find out how he got started with QuickBase and how the company is benefiting from using it today. With just 13 employees, Zopa Inc., a small global business and pioneer in social finance, relied on QuickBase for project and task tracking at first, and has since grown its pool of applications to include partner management and customer support.

When we spoke, Rajesh had expressed that he wanted low maintenance, web-based software to keep everyone on the same page. He wanted a tool that was easy for people to use; but not so simple that it lacked in functionality. Once employees and partners took to QuickBase, the task of collaboration for everyone became far less intensive - from a time and effort perspective. Overall Rajesh felt as though work had become much more streamlined with QuickBase. Listen to Rajesh’s story here.

Just a few months ago, Rajesh also participated in an interview with IDC analyst, Judy Hodges. The IDC buyer case study summarizing the interview is a great piece for anyone considering SaaS to help run their business. If you happen to be a small business, the story is all that more pertinent. The study dives even deeper into how Zopa decided to purchase QuickBase and how they’ve become more efficient and productive since using the solution.

From a web-based applications vendor perspective, I found the first and last portion of the case study to be of interest – where IDC guides vendors on how to best serve small businesses. I’m a bit biased; but to me, it sounds like QuickBase is on the right track.

Download the case study.

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